Suspenseful Sci-fi Thriller With Some Throwaway Concepts by Clayton Berry

Story – 7/10

This is my first review of any film and I caught Infini on netflix because it was at the top. Now I didn’t see any trailer to the film and I started watching this not knowing anything about it; so I was completely in the dark plot wise. The story opens up talking about the earth being so poor that people get apex devices attached to their backs so they can teleport (slip streaming) on dangerous missions or working in mining colonies to help pay the bills. My only problem with this first premise is that it really has nothing to do with the rest of the story of the film. This premise sort of was just thrown into explain how time moved between earth and mining colonies; and to tell how people get around in the galaxies. So what we get instead is a group of individuals who have to survive being contaminated by a living organism that doesn’t understand what humans are. So yeah, it gets all 28 days later meets the Thing, which also side turns around like a bad LSD trip; which what I really mean to say: People get infected by a thing, go stark raving mad, they try to kill each other, they can hear each other’s thoughts and the voices in their head don’t help much to calm them down either. So yeah, to sum up this movie story-wise, there is two different stories here. One throwaway story about slip streaming that has nothing to do with the rest of the movie and another crazy cool story that I instantly dug in.

Characters – 6/10

The two characters worth noting here are Whit Carmichael and Menzi. A lot of information gets thrown my way through this movie but when the film focuses on the redeeming qualities of a human being, I tend to pay attention. I half expected Menzi to work with Whit alot more because they both shared so much in common with going home, but to my pleasant surprise, it didn’t happen that way. Which, I think, is a very good thing because I love twists.

Editing and effects – 9/10

Before I got into watching this movie, I added this category because I am tired of sloppy editing in movies. Sometimes filmmakers either cut their scenes too loose or too tight. Too loose and you’ll see your actors pause before they deliver lines and too tight and you’ll cut into their lines. I haven’t seen either of that in this movie. Also the film doesn’t use visual effects as the story. The visual effects in this film are used to sparingly so attention is drawn away from what is going on. However, that doesn’t mean they didn’t use any. It just means they didn’t center the film around the effect itself. My only complaint is slip streaming might have been a visual effect that the filmmakers stumbled upon and they might have thought the effect was so cool they had to put it in the film and call it slip streaming. Just a guess though since the film is centered around this concept so much in the beginning. Got to admit, it does look very neat for an effect and I think they should patent that. I’ve never seen it before and I’ve watched thousands of movies. I definitely think the filmmakers could find a story about slip streaming as a follow up sequel to this film.

Music 9.9/10

The music seemed handled by and orchestra and I thought they hit their beats on cue every time. When the suspense called for it, I had a rise, and when it didn’t, it lowered. Action scenes felt tense and overall, I loved it.

Cinematography, sets and lighting – 9/10

Wow, just wow. I loved the detail they put into the future, from the spacesuits, to the walls to everything. I could tell the weapons were fake and there was a lot of items that could be bought from home depot here, but they put a lot of work into sprucing up those items for the shots. As for the shots themselves, whomever was the cinematographer on this will be a big name if he or she isn’t already. As for lighting, I’m not sure if we live in the age of lens flare or not. I tend to not mind it but it seemed overused at the beginning and when I started watching toward the middle, it balanced out.

Overall – 8/10

I definitely recommend this movie if you haven’t seen it. Just a warning, a lot of technical jargon will be thrown at you at the beginning of the movie and you might seem lost like I was. That slows up once we get into the second act and the movie becomes a lot easier to follow.